What was one of Franken's top legislative priorities when he first ran for the Senate as noted in the nonfiction book, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate?

Franken first ran for the Senate with health care reform listed as one of his top legislative priorities, and today, in his second term, he continues to champion for comprehensive, practical, and bipartisan health care legislation. In this book, health care is the first issue to which Franken devotes any extended discussion, claiming that he had always planned on making health care a central part of his platform, "but now, instead of talking about it just as a policy issue, [he] was also talking about it as a personal issue - because that's what it was for so many Minnesotans" (82). It is also the issue to which he dedicates the most time. The health care debate reached its peak during the time Franken was elected to the Senate with the hard-fought passage of the Affordable Care Act. Most of Franken's chapter dedicated to health care reflects on the ACA, how it was mutilated along its passage through Congress, and the multiple ways Republicans hindered its implementation and effectiveness. With only a two-page focus on the state of health care today, Franken warns fervently against letting the law be repealed as planned in 2018: "anyone who trusts this Republican Party with the future of our nation's health care system simply hasn't been paying attention" (266).